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Are they -really- beating Intel on the value end of the spectrum though? Core i5 Haswell is gonna have MORE than adequate graphics for anything up to gaming (and even some gaming) great CPU performance, power consumption is going to be at near-ARM levels, all for about $200 I'm guessing, maybe less. AMD's graphics may be better, but they are still reeling from the clusterfsck known as Bulldozer, their power consumption is up, they cant even idle at the levels that Intel can, and their chips cost between $100 and $200 for Piledriver.

Quite honestly, at least for me, I wont even CONSIDER an AMD APU for a Laptop just because of the heat and power consumption. Desktop, okay, maybe they have a shot in one of my builds just because power consumption doesnt matter as much there.

I'm curious; is the power consumption on Haswell really that amazing that it can be called 'close to ARM levels'?

For comparison's sake, my 1-month old SurfaceRT can last for anywhere between 12 - 20 hours (non-idle with WiFi and Bluetooh disabled; i use it more as a glorified e-reader and disk management device) on a single charge with its quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. Assuming WindowsRT works on x86 as well and all other variables kept the same, how much juice can I get out of the average Haswell chip compared to what I'm currently getting out of the Tegra?

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I'm curious; is the power consumption on Haswell really that amazing that it can be called 'close to ARM levels'?

For comparison's sake, my 1-month old SurfaceRT can last for anywhere between 12 - 20 hours (non-idle with WiFi and Bluetooh disabled; i use it more as a glorified e-reader and disk management device) on a single charge with its quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. Assuming WindowsRT works on x86 as well and all other variables kept the same, how much juice can I get out of the average Haswell chip compared to what I'm currently getting out of the Tegra?

If the marketting is to be believed, the next gen Atoms are supposed to use Haswell as their base (or at least that WAS the plan) and that those atoms would hit near-ARM. So going off that, apparently Haswell is very flexible in terms of power/performance.

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On the laptop side, mobile i5s are twice as slow as the desktop ones because they only have two cores (but at least they have HT). Marketing, quand tu nous tiens...

Calinou you seem to be forgetting that we've hit the point where CPU and GPU are beyond what anyone would ever NEED. Haswell or Broadwell graphics are perfectly good for anyone who's not doing gaming as their main usecase, hell I'm gaming on an Sandy Bridge ULV and pretty happy with frame rates. The only time I can ever clock out this CPU is during compiles-- it takes me about 90minutes to compile the linux kernel. The only reason I have to upgrade this laptop is 1) Better screen, 2) Better power consumption 3) Hard drive and RAM are soldered on, so eventually a bump to 8Gbs and a bigger SSD would be nice.

Also keep in mind that in mobile... the number 1 thing that matters is power consumption for battery life, and thermal levels because of it being either on the person's lap or in their hands, and Intel wins on BOTH while providing very good performance. This laptop right now is 9.5watts, giving me about 5hrs of battery life (firefox and about 15 tabs are open. KDE desktop is loaded, and powertop is complaing about a lot of BAD tunables so I could prob get down to 8watts if I tried) and 47degrees Celsius, the lowest I've ever seen it go was 38.

On the desktop, where heat and power consumption don't matter as much, then yes AMD wins performance-per-dollar I will give you that. But when you're talking mobile then you have a lot more factors to bring in.

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On the desktop, where heat and power consumption don't matter as much, then yes AMD wins performance-per-dollar I will give you that. But when you're talking mobile then you have a lot more factors to bring in.

I wouldn't even say that AMD wins the performance/dollar on the desktop now days. It really depends on the type of work one does on the system. i5's are pretty competitive in comparison with the FX series and the motherboards that are available for intels are a bit more feature rich for the same priced AMD boards (with the exception of only having two SATA 3 ports on intel boards). The intels do offer a more consistent gaming experience. The lack of a new chipset for the AMD's hurt them quite a bit in the value dept.

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I wouldn't even say that AMD wins the performance/dollar on the desktop now days. It really depends on the type of work one does on the system. i5's are pretty competitive in comparison with the FX series and the motherboards that are available for intels are a bit more feature rich for the same priced AMD boards (with the exception of only having two SATA 3 ports on intel boards). The intels do offer a more consistent gaming experience. The lack of a new chipset for the AMD's hurt them quite a bit in the value dept.

I've said this before... What is the point in a new chipset? Will offer a newer version of SATA? Or USB? Or PCIe? I there arent any new features to add then there is no need for a new chipset. Releasing a new chipset that doesnt add anything is is exactly the same thing as continuing to release the same chipset.

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Being an AMD fanboy I must say they really need a new chipstet! For me the weakest point right know is how bad the memory controller is compared with Intel solution, in benchmarking they offer truly poor results! Also PCI express 3.0 should already be implemented! While ASUS already provides a motherboard with pci e 3.0 on the 990fx chipset is not really a native solution.

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The only reason I have to upgrade this laptop is 1) Better screen, 2) Better power consumption 3) Hard drive and RAM are soldered on, so eventually a bump to 8Gbs and a bigger SSD would be nice.

I don't know about you but I have a really hard time using up 4GB of RAM on linux (KDE desktop). I don't even use a swap. I could see if you edit a lot of RAW images, have large video projects open, or run virtual machines, you might run out, but 4GB seems plenty enough for me for a long time. On OS X (Mountain Lion) even after an upgrade from 4GB to 8GB I was still running out of memory with fewer apps open!